


hard times

by percyrashid (niewanyin)



Series: Aaron Berg [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 02:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21206300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niewanyin/pseuds/percyrashid
Summary: A character study on Aaron Berg.





	hard times

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank njw for the beta work!!
> 
> And I hope everyone hear enjoys the backstory on Aaron Berg.

** _i_ **

Aaron remembers his mother being there when he was little. He knows most demigods don’t have them, he would actually guess that no one but him has one. Or maybe they do and they haven’t said anything because like Aaron, they see those memories as secret pieces of themselves that should never be shared with the world.

Aaron remembers his mother as a beautiful woman with long, sleek black hair, ice blue eyes, and snow white skin. She was tall and slender and he remembers loving her, once upon a time.

He inherited her eyes, and maybe her hair, but his skin is as dark as his father’s. His father’s side of the family is mixed Greenlandic Inuit and Danish. He doesn’t know the exact mix of it, but that’s understandable. He speaks Kalaallisut and Danish in pieces. When he was younger and his father would take him to Nuuk, he would see family members that were darker than him and family members that were almost as pale as his mother. He doesn’t need to know more. He just knows that he’s a Berg and that’s something to be proud of.

What he remembers most about his mother is the way she would look at him, like he was a puzzle that she couldn’t figure out.

By the time he was five, his mother wasn’t there anymore. Truth be told, he never knew why she was there in the first place.

** _ii_ **

He isn’t sure how his parents met. His father got a scholarship to the University of Chicago to study Biological Sciences that would eventually lead him to becoming a neurologist. Somehow, his parents met. He was always a little iffy on the details. He knew his father had him right after he graduated med school, but he doesn’t know how he came about. He remembers never seeing his father as he worked hard at his residency and at his fellowship, living half the time at a daycare while his father lived half the time at work. He remembers sometimes growing up in a small, but nice Chicago apartment and then over time it became a bigger and nicer apartment. He remembers seeing his father more as he got older mainly because Aaron made him.

Perhaps it should be mentioned that he only saw his mother when his father wasn’t around.

** _iii_ **

He first finds out something is different about him when he doesn’t freeze to death. He runs away from home when he was nine years old, after a fight with his father. His father was telling him to do something, what Aaron doesn’t even remember. He just remembers being mad that this man that he hardly ever saw and was like a stranger to him was telling him what to do.  He didn’t know who Aaron was, how could he say what was best for him? By that time, his mother was gone and the last time they were in Nuuk was two years ago for a week and a half. His father had spent 95% of his time there in a medical conference.

He leaves in the middle of the night during a Chicago January. He wanders around the frozen city, enjoying the peace and solitude of the seemingly empty city. He doesn’t remember getting cold, he actually never had before in his life.By the time dawn rolls around, he’s back home with his father none the wiser and Aaron starting to wonder about himself for the first, but not the last, time in his life.

** _iv_ **

He will always carry the look of disappointment on his father’s face when Aaron was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. His father took it better than most demigods’ mortal parent, he’ll find out someday. He’s enrolled in tutoring programs and has special ed teachers and on a few rare occasions, his father actually bothers to sit down and help with his homework. His father even buys him audiobooks of all the stories they’re reading in school, or just the really popular ones that all the kids are reading so that Aaron can talk about them to his friends if he had them. That doesn’t change being eight and feeling like a piece of shit when he hears his father ask if “there is anything they can do to cure him.”

Aaron didn’t even realize he was sick.

** _v_ **

He found out about the truth about his mother when he was thirteen years old. That’s when he meets Irene. She’s an awkward girl with a limp who Aaron finds himself drawn to. She seems to be just as much an outcast as he is. Aaron, who always found himself too dark, too tall, too bulky, too stupid, too jittery.

Irene? Irene didn’t see any of that. Aaron didn’t have a crush on Irene. Not in the least. She wasn’t . . . she wasn’t his type. What he did have was the knowledge of this must be what acceptance feels like.

That changes when he’s sat down at the end of eighth grade by Irene, and she starts to speak. Aaron doesn’t really remember much of what she had to say. He just remembers the roaring in his ear as he realizes that just like everyone else; Irene only accepted a part of him. A different part than everyone else true, but just parts like everyone else.

** _vi_ **

He’s claimed by his mother a week after he arrives at Camp Half-Blood. He doesn’t feel anything about it. He has a name for her,  _ Khione _ , and he has sisters, Astrid Bordeaux and Victoria Singh. Astrid is seventeen and pretty. She’s Cajun and has the accent, with smooth olive skin and wavy brown hair. Victoria is sixteen and pretty too. She’s half Indian; her father was from Mumbai, with brown skin and the hair that Aaron knows she got from their mother.

All three of them have their mother’s eyes.

** _vii_ **

He meets Percy Jackson three weeks after he arrives at Camp Half-Blood. Meet is actually not the correct word. He remembers seeing a small kid with big green eyes and long black hair and skin that was just a little too brown to be a tan. He remembers seeing him about the Hermes Cabin where Aaron was living, because even though he and Astrid and Victoria have all been claim, they have to live in this over packed cabin with children just waiting to find out a little something about themselves. Percy’s moved out of there pretty quick, and Aaron watches him go with a pit of jealousy in his stomach.

** _viii_ **

Aaron does not like to think about the war. Aaron just wants to forget it. Aaron wants to forget the slumped shoulders of Astrid and the broken sobs of Victoria. He wants to forget the triumph he felt for a brief moment when it all ended.

Aaron wants to feel whole but he’s not quite sure how to do that when he never had all the pieces in the first place.


End file.
